According to an article in daily SME today, the police authorities are abusing the privilege of being able to request the details of mobile phone conversations from operators.
This practice of tuning into people’s phone calls is allowed provided there are serious grounds for it, such as a terrorist threat or in the case of known or suspected organised crime groups, but it seems that the breach of privacy is being allowed also in unjustified cases involving petty offences, according to a report from the European Information Society Institute (EISI).
According to daily SME, last year the police got their hands on information from around 16,000 cases, even though only about 2,600 had been officially requested and endorsed by the courts. As might be expected, the figures are disputed by mobile phone operators, although as yet nobody knows why there is such a big discrepancy between their figures and those of the police. This could be down to what items are actually counted.
Most probably checking their “girls” weren’t giving freebees!